


the sad things that i know about you

by diasterisms



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 21:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5681617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/pseuds/diasterisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Overall," she tells him, "moody existentialism doesn't quite seem like the right tone for what is essentially a swashbuckler."</p>
<p>He manages a curt nod. "I know many critics who would agree with you."</p>
<p>"Then they'll probably also join me in bemoaning the fact that you killed off your protagonist," she chides.</p>
<p>"It comes with the job, unfortunately."</p>
<p>"What— people taking issue with your narrative choices?"</p>
<p>"No." He flashes a self-deprecating smirk. "Killing your darlings."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sad things that i know about you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bittersnake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersnake/gifts).



> Modern AU, a.k.a GOLD STAR I TRIED. Based on a variety of [Tumblr prompts](http://kylorenvevo.tumblr.com/post/136907991716/i-dont-know-who-you-are-but-we-keep-running-into).

Ben Solo wakes up one morning and feels like something's trying to tell him somebody.

 

"It's the other way around," corrects his agent, a tall, imposing, fastidiously British woman named Phasma, whose no-nonsense attitude is ideal for handling temperamental authors. _"Somebody_ is trying to tell you _something."_

 

"I know what I meant the first time," Ben insists, but he can't explain it— at least, not yet, not in terms anyone else will understand until he finds the Pratchett-esque punch-to-the-gut one-liner that the whole book's been building up to all along. It's just a feeling that's been vaguely snapping at his heels ever since he dragged himself out of bed, some silent grind of celestial gears underneath the humdrum veneer of the world. He's the guy standing on nineteenth-century railroad tracks in a lonely tree-thick mountain somewhere, waiting for the roar of an engine, the whistle of steam.

 

Ben leaves the coffee shop after promising Phasma that he'll make deadline _this_ time— she doesn't look particularly optimistic, but she sends him off with a mock salute, anyway. The sun glares from shiny chrome bumpers and high skyscraper windows as he wanders down the street, hands shoved into the pockets of his dark coat, pondering the strange sense of destiny that permeates this ordinary Wednesday— how even the clink of ice cubes in his cafe mazagran had seemed imbued with glorious purpose.

 

The small family-owned bookstore on the corner is having a clearance sale, a sleepy-looking employee manning the tables set outside, laden with paperback romances, slim volumes of poetry, and glossy hard-bound thrillers, their prices slashed in half. The lone customer at this early hour is a girl, chestnut-haired and dressed in autumn colors, a motley of browns and reds. When Ben sees her, it's as if the universe itself is poised on the edge of a precipice, as if the free-floating puzzle pieces of this nameless almost-dread are preparing to click into place.

 

Something trying to tell him somebody.

 

The girl's biting her lip as she thumbs through a copy of the mass-market teen dystopia that had made the rounds on last year's bestseller lists. He really _should_ let it go, but he can't quite help the elegant snort that pricks his throat, and she raises wide hazel eyes to him in question.

 

"That's a load of crap," he scoffs, with an expansive nod at the book in her hands. "It's sappy, derivative, pure wish fulfillment, targeted at—"

 

"An overwhelmingly female audience?" she bites out, in an accent rawer than Phasma's, her eyes clouding from polite to hostile. "Young girls who lacked positive representation in mainstream media when they were kids? Who are only now just encountering protagonists who look like them, who think like them, who have the same dreams and fears? Heroines they can actually relate to and feel empowered by?"

 

"Representation isn't the issue," he informs her icily. "It's a matter of style, and literary worth."

 

"Worth determined by patriarchal tradition, you mean," she counters. "By the same people who idolize Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, and Kerouac— none of whom held women in very high regard. Is it any wonder, then, that the YA demographic is embracing their genre? Here, in these pages, they are not erased."

 

Ben frowns. Dissenting opinions are an occupational hazard, but he's used to them coming from his circle of snooty hipsters and world-weary academics— not some brat a foot shorter than he is, with a constellation of freckles on sun-tanned elfin features and a fierce gaze and an eloquent tongue.

 

"But, of course, I'm wasting my breath." She has the gall to turn her nose up at him. "You'll never understand because you'll never know what it was like, growing up that way."

 

_"What_ way?" he demands.

 

"Alone. Scared. Starving for—" She catches herself with a shrug, an angry little huff that lopes into something like a smirk. "I can't explain. You won't get it. _Now_ who's feeling excluded?"

 

He's speechless. The train's here, but it's gone off the rails, sunlight glinting on metal, long mountain road. She turns away from him to hand several crisp bills to the employee, and she slips the book into her canvas tote like she's making a point.

 

If there's one thing that Ben has learned over the years, it's that it's always better to be the one who leaves first. So he does.

 

*

 

Leia Organa is in fine form tonight. Rey watches over the rim of her champagne flute as the senator sweeps from one end of the room to the next, an unassailable vision in royal blue silk, greeting philanthropists, reporters, and fellow politicians alike with the same warm, courteous smile.

 

"She lives for these things, you know," grunts a tobacco-scratched voice to Rey's left. "Me, I never got the hang of it— hobnobbing and all that."

 

"I shouldn't think you've had much opportunity to practice," she teases the senator's husband. Han Solo spends his days retrieving priceless artifacts from all over the world and hauling them across war-torn borders, sometimes via channels the legality of which Rey doesn't much care to speculate on. He's responsible for the presence of nearly half the angelic sculptures and reliefs that comprise her museum's latest exhibit, filling the room with the span of stone wings and sightless gazes.

 

"Tell you what, kid," Han offers, "when you get bored with your feather dusters and catalogues, come see me."

 

"Tempting." It really _is,_ though. She imagines lost palaces in humid green jungles, frozen arrowheads jutting out from layers of pristine snow, altars polished by centuries of wind and sand. She imagines wild firefights in remote lands and secret flights under cover of darkness. She imagines anywhere that isn't this metal city, anything that isn't daily routine.

 

"Father."

 

Han and Rey turn in unison. She tenses, almost immediately— it's _him,_ the jerk from the bookstore last week. His lips curl when he sees her face, but he doesn't say anything.

 

"Ben." A look of pleasant surprise flickers over Han's features, quickly replaced by something more— _strained._ "Good to see you." He pats Ben's shoulder, an awkward gesture that the younger man seems to suffer in silence until Han's hand falls back to his side, as if in defeat.

 

Rey can't think of any other pair in the world more unlikely to be related. They're both wearing suits, in accordance with the gala's strict black tie, but, while Han looks harassed and uncomfortable in the getup, Ben is a portrait of bespoke disdain. Perhaps he's more his mother's child.

 

They don't _act_ related, either. In an old life that's best forgotten, Rey boarded at St. Plutt's Home for Working Girls in Westminster, but, during these few months that she's been stateside, she's spent enough time with her friends' families to know that normal fathers and sons don't stand stiffly apart from each other while looking like they can't decide whether to start throwing punches or just walk away.

 

In the end, Han takes the diplomat's approach, proving that he's learned a thing or two from Leia, after all. "Ben, this is Rey, the Coruscant's assistant curator. Rey, this is my son, Ben." He adds, with a note of forced joviality, "You might know him, he wrote that book about dragons in space—"

 

Rey's eyebrows nearly shoot off the top of her head. _"You're_ Kylo Ren?"

 

Not a single muscle twitches on Ben's long, narrow face, but there's a new undercurrent in the coffee-colored stare that he trains on her. "You've read my book?"

 

_Who hasn't?_ she thinks, but the grit of their first encounter lodges into her pride and stops her from tossing this compliment his way. She decides to give her unvarnished opinion, instead. "It's compelling and ambitious. Some might say _too_ ambitious, because you try to accomplish so many things at once," she tells him slowly. "Your writing style is— I would describe it as _magnetic,_ I like its nuances, but, overall, moody existentialism doesn't quite feel like the right tone for what is essentially a swashbuckler."

 

His fists clench even as he manages a curt nod. "I know many critics who would agree with you."

 

"Then they'll probably also join me in bemoaning the fact that you killed off your protagonist," she chides.

 

"It comes with the job, unfortunately."

 

"What— people taking issue with your narrative choices?"

 

"No." He flashes a self-deprecating smirk that's just this side of cruel. "Killing your darlings."

 

Han gapes at his son. "You offed the hero guy? That's too—" He shuts his mouth when he realizes what it is that he's letting slip, but it's too late. Ben looks absolutely _humiliated._ Rey drops her gaze to the depths of her champagne, wishing she were anywhere but here.

 

After a stretch of terse silence, Han clears his throat. "I always meant to finish reading your book," he says, gruff and apologetic, "but, with one thing leading to another—"

 

"I understand," Ben says smoothly, regaining his composure. "If the two of you will excuse me, I have another engagement."

 

"At least say hi to your mother before you go," Han pleads. "She was hoping you'd come tonight."

 

Ben stalks off to position himself at Leia's elbow until she notices him, which takes her less than a second. "Ben!" she cries, and, if her smile had been bright before as she chatted up the museum's patrons, now it's quite capable of lighting up the entire city. "You made it!"

 

He mutters something noncommittal, too low for Rey to hear, and his mother presses her cheek to his broad chest. He drapes a lean, hesitant arm over her shoulders, and it's kind of endearing, really, how the dignified senator just _vanishes_ into her tall, dark-haired son.

 

"I tried to stick it out with his book. I _did,"_ Han grumbles. "But I've never been much of a reader, and the damn thing's six hundred pages long."

 

"Longer," Rey soothes. "Including the glossaries and appendices." Kylo Ren had made up several actual _languages,_ if she recalls correctly, and there had been legitimate _diagrams_ of every single spaceship. It was like Tolkien on amphetamines.

 

"Lives too much inside his head, that boy." Han sounds bitter, and looks terribly old all of a sudden. "Just like his real grandfather."

 

"Real?" she echoes.

 

Han seems taken aback, and then collects himself as if belatedly remembering that she's new to the U.S. and, as such, might not be updated on the who's who. "I guess there's no harm in telling, it's hardly a secret even if mention of it in the press has died down in recent years— Leia's adopted. Her biological father is Anakin Skywalker."

 

Rey's jaw drops open at the mention of this name, of the mysterious, brooding figure who had restructured the landscape of contemporary science fiction with gorgeous, haunting, labyrinthine novels that were already being slated for college syllabuses a mere thirty years after his death.

 

"Never finished a single Skywalker, either, come to think of it," Han muses, rubbing his chin. "Couldn't get past the first few pages. Ben spent his childhood with his nose glued to those books. I figured I'd give them a shot so we'd have something to talk about, but—" He sighs. "Anyway, it's too late for any of that now. He was... twitchy, even when he was young. Only got worse as he grew older."

 

Rey doesn't know what to say that won't come out trite or useless or false, so she covers up her silence with a sip of champagne. The icy fizz has worn off; it's all room-temperature sweetness and kick. She makes a face.

 

A few feet away, Ben untangles himself from Leia, glancing over at Rey just in time to catch her unladylike grimace, all wrinkled nose and stuck-out tongue. Amusement flares in his dark eyes, and then he's gone, striding from the room in swift, bold steps, leaving behind two parents who gaze wistfully at his retreating back.

 

"I've met him before," Rey blurts out. "We spoke. Or, well, argued."

 

"Yeah?" Han peers at her with interest.

 

"He walked up to me on the street and accused me of having bad taste in literature."

 

"Sounds like Ben, all right." The man shakes his head. "God, I wonder where we went wrong with that kid."

 

*

 

When Ben sees Rey again, it's a quarter past noon on a Saturday and they reach the end of the shawarma food truck queue at the same time. They exchange pointed glowers, but neither of them budge. _All wars are the same war,_ he remembers reading that once, scrawled in black Sharpie on a gasoline station bathroom wall. He remembers being frustrated that he had not thought of it first.

 

In mutual, unspoken challenge, they stand shoulder to shoulder, stepping forward with determined sync to mirror each satisfied customer walking away with a wrap in hand. The air is heavy with the scents of grilled meat and fresh-baked pita and roasted garlic, and he's sneaking glances at her, at the golden fringe of her long lashes in sunlight, at the stubborn tilt of her honeyed chin. What do you do when the war marches up to your door and demands to take you prisoner? Surrendering's half the fight.

 

"Why do you use a pseudonym?" she asks, all that restless, belligerent energy of hers thrumming through her body until it spills past her chest. "If the whole world knew that Kylo Ren was Anakin Skywalker's grandson—"

 

This is an old, sore point with Snoke Publishing. They had counted on the strength of Anakin's reputation to sell copies. Negotiations had been a nightmare, and, to this day, Ben's still not sure how Phasma had talked her way out of that one. "When I write something worthy of my grandfather's legacy, then I shall use my birth name."

 

"Why not make a legacy of your own?" she presses. "I read _Starkiller_ again, and the similarities to _Death Star_ are glaringly obvious, now that I think about it— it's right _there,_ in the _title—_ I don't know how critics missed it the first time—"

 

"Perhaps they didn't know what they were looking for," he interrupts her quietly. "You did." It lances through him, like a sliver of needle-thin rain plunging into a deep ocean, all silver and blue, the thought of her curled up on a sofa and reading his book. In his daydream, the upholstery is a shocking tartan, for some reason, and her hair hangs loose around her face, framing the way it grins at the funny parts, tenses at the cliffhangers, and crumples at the hero's noble death. _You don't get it,_ he wants to tell her. _None of you do. It was a story about sacrifice._

 

"It's holding you back," she says. "The desire to write the next Skywalker. I _feel_ it— how you start to pursue an original line of thought, and then clamp it down so you can return to genre. It doesn't have to be that way. That's the beauty about writing— you don't have to be constrained."

 

"It would be an honor to be like my grandfather," he snaps. "He was a great man—"

 

_"No, he wasn't."_ The thunderous statement explodes with such force that several heads in the queue turn to look at them. "He _abandoned_ his family. All of his relationships crashed and burned because he was consumed with finishing _Death Star._ He died _alone._ That is _not_ greatness."

 

"Listen," Ben hisses, and he can't recognize his own voice when it's like this, savage and cutting and ugly and dark, "listen to me. Do not make the mistake of presuming that you are the expert on my family's affairs. You are a lackey at the museum my mother patronizes and my father acquires things for. That is _all._ You don't get to tell me how to do— _any_ of this. How to feel about _any_ of it."

 

Rey stares at him with those intense, unsettling eyes that are not quite brown, not quite green. Why does he feel like this moment is fated, heart-twisting and soul-sickening as it is? Like every step he's walked since the day of the bookstore has always been meant to lead him to her eyes looking at him like that, narrowed and so full of fire?

 

"Fine," she exhales through gritted teeth. "If that's the way it is, then, _fine._ I tried. Enjoy your shawarma."

 

She steps away from the queue, but he stops her, hand on her arm. There's a jolt— a sudden keening warmth— at the places where his fingers dig into her sleeve.

 

"No, please, allow me," he mocks, before releasing her.

 

There's a prickle on his nape as he storms down the sidewalk. He imagines her staring at him still, but he'll only feel worse if she _isn't,_ so he takes extra care not to look back.

 

*

 

_Angels of the Coruscant_ has garnered rave reviews, drawing a steady stream of tourists and art lovers daily, so Rey's always grateful for the peaceful, quiet two hours when the museum's closed in the early afternoon. On this day more than any other.

 

"Jesus Christ," laughs the security guard when Rey returns from her lunch break, soaking wet and covered in mud. "What happened to you?"

 

"Fell in a puddle," she grunts as she ducks into the realm of marble walls and lush tapestries that drown out the sound of the pouring rain.

 

It's been a bad day, but that doesn't mean it has to be bad all the way through. Rey's an optimistic person by nature, a real go-getter. So she makes the most out of what she has, and, half an hour later, she's blowdrying her clothes in the bathroom after washing them in the sink. It's the public bathroom on the first floor and she's in her underwear, but, so what, the Coruscant doesn't open for another hour, anyway.

 

She's still in a somewhat lousy mood, though. Slipping on a puddle and then landing face-first in another one will do that to a person. She thinks of the positives, like the unexpectedly successful launch of her poetry chapbook last night, and the lunch at the Indian restaurant earlier with Finn, Poe, and Jessika to celebrate said chapbook launch.

 

_A launch lunch,_ Poe had joked, causing Finn and Jessika to boo him loudly.

 

When that's not enough to pull her out of her slump, Rey decides to brush her teeth. It's one of those tricks she picked up at St. Plutt's Home for Working Girls— when your world is going to shit, you do something, anything, to set even just the tiniest part of it right. That can involve doing your hair or some cutesy detail like matching the color of your socks to your wallet— or, in this case, eradicating the curry from your breath.

 

So, yeah, that's how she sees Ben Solo again. Her clothes are hanging over a bathroom stall door and she's brushing her teeth and dancing in front of the mirror while "My Life Would Suck Without You" blares from her phone.

 

She freezes at the sight of his reflection standing in the doorway. He's got a furious blush going, a violent crimson stain all the way from his neck to the tips of his ears. _You look so young,_ Rey thinks, although that is, of course, entirely the wrong response to this situation. She's in her _underwear._

 

"Y-you..." he sputters, trails off, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, dark eyes frantically skittering everywhere except towards her. "You have terrible taste in music," he manages at last.

 

She hurls her tube of toothpaste at him. It beans him right on the shoulder, and he takes that as his cue to retreat.

 

Later, dressed in clean, damp clothes, with the lingering aftertaste of mint stinging her tongue, she finds him in the _Angels_ gallery, skulking in the shadow of a massive winged sculpture raising its sword to the skylights. He could have been carved from stone himself, hands in his pockets, feet braced slightly apart, profile angled to the seraphim as if in silent communion.

 

"That one's from the Renaissance era, early sixteenth century." Rey's brisk voice echoes throughout the vast room. "Your father retrieved it from the basement of a deposed dictator's mansion in—"

 

"I don't want to talk about my father." Ben's tone is flat and cold, as if he hadn't just seen her prancing around in her skivvies.

 

"Do you want to talk about what you're doing here, then? Because we're closed, you know. How did you even get in?"

 

He snorts, letting her figure that last one out for herself. He's Leia Organa's son— of _course_ he can go anywhere he pleases. She feels kind of stupid, actually, that she hadn't recognized him right off the bat, but it's not like she's been in the U.S. for very long and, anyway, he's ridiculously low-profile. Ben Solo doesn't appear at photo ops with his parents, and Kylo Ren doesn't grant interviews.

 

"I found the exhibit interesting when I attended that gala," he says, without looking at her. "I thought I'd come back at a later time, when I could have it to myself."

 

"Bit greedy, aren't you?" she remarks.

 

He shrugs.

 

"Well, now that you've gotten a closer look—" Good Lord, she can't _actually_ be striving to make small talk with him, can she?— "what do you think of it?"

 

"I think that I shouldn't blink."

 

She groans. "You're a _Doctor Who_ fan. Big surprise."

 

"You don't like _Doctor Who?"_

 

"I'm British," she informs him with a hint of cheek. "I'm _required_ to like it. There's probably a law."

 

He inclines his head to show that he understands she's making a joke, but he doesn't say anything in response, and _that's that,_ she thinks, about to leave him to it, but then he has to go and surprise her.

 

"I read your poetry. The art director at Snoke left it on the table after our meeting this morning."

 

"Oh?" she breathes, carefully. "How did you know it was mine?"

 

"Rey is an uncommon name. And I—" He hesitates, as if searching for the right words. "I recognized your voice. I just knew it was you."

 

She's not sure what he's just revealed, or even if he meant to reveal it at all. She thinks about him reading her book. In a skyscraper made of glass, in a conference room with cherrywood panels and muted carpets— maybe even a couple of potted ferns, why not— he bows over her poetry, his black hair falling into his eyes. She imagines that, at such a height, the daylight would pour into those eyes as they shift over the soul that she spilled onto the page. _I hope you got it right,_ she wants to tell him. _I hope you understood exactly what I wanted to say._

 

"You write like you're disassembling something," he murmurs. "You break images and emotions down into their smallest parts, but you don't put them back together again. It's the opposite of structured, but there is poignancy in that. However, I think you are too aloof."

 

"Aloof," she repeats, blankly.

 

"You have to give in to the words, you know." He's still staring at the angel, and he almost sounds like he's talking to himself. "Whatever demons you unearth, you have to carry them with you."

 

And, okay, she should really develop a thicker skin if she wants to break into this industry. She has to learn to take criticism with grace. But it still _stabs._ She wonders what it must be like for him, with his wider audience, with his elaborate yet formulaic fantasy worlds.

 

"Overall," he continues, "I would say that your work lacks heart. But not vision."

 

"That's funny." Her voice emerges soft and thick. "You're the other way around."

 

He's been at this longer than she has; he barely flinches. "Vision can be acquired, Rey. And so can heart."

 

"All wars are the same war."

 

He _does_ look at her then— a deep, penetrating gaze that she finds hard to hold.

 

"It's from a poem," she mumbles. "By Richard Siken. It's one of my favorites."

 

"Something trying to tell me somebody."

 

"What?"

 

"Never mind." Ben smiles, and it's dangerously close to genuine, although it looks out of place on lips that were made to sulk.

 

He leaves first— of course he does— the sound of his departing footsteps falling flat amidst the ruins of angels.

 

*

 

Hux is one of the few people in the literary scene who knows Kylo Ren's real identity, and that's only because they once had to collaborate on a critically acclaimed but not so commercially successful graphic novel. They aren't friends— far from it— although there are times when they sit together at Maz's Cantina and drink whiskey in frigid silence.

 

Tonight, Hux seems to be in the mood to talk, which is unfortunate because his voice is the sort of nasal whine that sets Ben's teeth on edge.

 

"I long to return to the glory days of science fiction. Asimov, Bradbury, van Vogt... Hell, even the late eighties wave." Hux fixes his beady eyes on the man across the table. "You know _Speaker for the Dead?_ I felt that." He thumps his chest. "Here."

 

Ben has no idea why Hux would presume that he hasn't read Orson Scott Card, _of all people,_ but he swallows his annoyance with another burning sip of Jameson.

 

"Then there's Skywalker," Hux continues, watching Ben to see if the barb digs in. "Personally, I feel that _Death Star_ is his poorest, most overrated work. _Dark Lord_ is far better, if you ask me."

 

"No one asked you, however," Ben points out.

 

Hux ignores him. "You shouldn't have killed your hero, Ren. There's a difference between pathos and shock value. How's the new book coming, by the way?"

 

"It's coming." Ben drains his glass and then stands up, slamming his share of the bill on the table.

 

Hux laughs, a dry sound tempered with more irony than outright malice. "Anakin Skywalker's grandson." He shakes his head at Ben, and the expression on his pointy, sallow face could almost be sympathetic if viewed from another angle. "You poor bastard."

 

Ben's a trembling mess of pent-up fury as he staggers out of the bar. Years of enduring Hux's presence have inoculated him against the other man's snide remarks, but they're the last straw after a particularly trying week. Phasma's been pestering him nonstop for a first draft or an outline or _anything_ that she can submit to his publisher before they're tempted to cut him loose, and his mother's extending hopeful invitations for a nice, quiet family dinner before Han leaves on another one of his trips. Ben's blocked— he hasn't written anything new in _months,_ the words just aren't coming out— and he hates the awful twist in his chest every time he has to brush Leia off— and everything's just been so _stressful—_

 

There's a row of cars crowding the makeshift parking lot on the side street by Maz's Cantina. With a frustrated hiss, Ben kicks the front tire of the first one that he reaches— a battered lemon-yellow Volkswagen Beetle that doesn't even look like it can survive a strong gust of wind, let alone an actual _kick._

 

This tire, he decides as he lashes out at it again, is a symbol. It's a goddamned _metaphor._ For Hux, for Snoke Publishing, for his father, for every scathing, pretentious review—

 

_"What_ on _earth_ are you _doing?"_

 

Rey's scowling in the moonlight, an irate vision in a bright red coat, a silver car key dripping from her fingers.

 

He shuts his eyes, briefly. "This _would_ happen to be your car."

 

"You can't just go around destroying other people's property!" She jabs the key into his side, eliciting a startled grunt of pain from him. "How _dare—_ is this the way your mother raised— no, of course not, the senator's an amazing woman—" She takes a step back so that she can slam the full weight of her glare at him. _"You,_ on the other hand, are an _asshole!"_

 

This girl's refusal to be intimidated continues to unnerve him. "I am not exactly having the most pleasant of evenings, Rey, so if you could just—"

 

"Bad day, bad life, who _cares?"_ Shit, she's really angry. She's strung like a live wire— he can practically see sparks coming off her. "Your father is leaving for the Balkans tomorrow. He'll be gone for _months,_ and you're not even going to say goodbye!"

 

"That is none of your business."

 

"You made it my business when you started kicking my car," she retorts. "Look, I know about you, okay? Han told me a few things that night at the gala. I know you don't have the best relationship with your family. You probably even had a lousy childhood. I know you're running yourself into the ground trying to be as great as Anakin. I know how frustrating it is when you write— when you _build_ something— only for people to completely miss the point. But none of that makes me feel sorry for you. In fact, it makes me positively _livid!"_ She draws a deep breath. "You have things I never had, Ben. And you're throwing it all away because it doesn't fit with whatever image you have of your crazy grandfather's life or whatever angsty pseudo-artistic band you listened to in high school!"

 

Her outburst is met with chilling silence. The sidewalk rings with it, drowning out the patter of jaunty music and indistinct conversations floating from the Cantina. She's frowning at him against a backdrop of soft-lit streets and glimmering stars.

 

A star had been the last thing that the protagonist of his novel ever saw, Ben remembers. A black-gloved hand reaching out to the snowy dot of radiance in the horizon, as if attempting to clutch it to his chest— that final chapter had been the easiest to write, he had churned it out in the space of one morning.

 

Now he pauses to wonder if that effortlessness was all wrong— if, after hundreds of pages, it should have been more difficult for his fingers to land that fatal strike as they flew over the keyboard.

 

"Consider this. Even Anakin's heroes lived," Rey says now, in that uncanny way she has of being able to gauge the direction of his thoughts. "No matter how much you worship him, that was the point _you_ missed. You once told me that writers have to carry our demons. That doesn't mean they get to carry us." She ends on a soft note, softer than he'd expected. "Go. Say goodbye to your father. At least have the guts."

 

She doesn't move, doesn't budge, just watches him intently, until it's too much to bear and he has to turn around and leave.

 

*

 

It's late afternoon when Rey walks out of the Coruscant the next day. She pries the pins from her careful bun and shakes her hair loose, contemplating whether to grab a bite to eat before heading home or settle for takeaway from the Chinese place.

 

She marvels that this is the most of her worries. Back at St. Plutt's, she'd never imagined having a life like this, friends that feel like family, a city that was hers to conquer. Han and Leia had promised that she would get to participate in the next wave of the Coruscant's art repatriation program as well, so, a few months from now, she'll get to travel the world, too.

 

All of it still feels like a gift.

 

There's a man sitting on the front steps of the museum, wearing a familiar dark jacket. Rey stops in her tracks. His profile is caught in a slant of red-gold sunlight, and he has the meditative expression of someone who's been waiting a while.

 

He stands up when he notices her presence. "I came from the airport."

 

She arches a brow. "Do you want a medal?"

 

For a second, Ben looks like he's about to give in to the impulse to laugh. When he doesn't, she rolls her eyes. It's like pulling teeth with this one.

 

"I don't want a medal," he says, slowly. "I just wanted you to know."

 

He angles his back towards her and he's already got one foot on the sidewalk, when she suddenly thinks— _oh, what the hell—_

 

"I'm getting pretty sick of watching you walk away." Her tone is sour, grudging. There's that, at least.

 

He hesitates, then nods, as if to himself, or to whatever he's putting to rest. "You won't have to, if you walk with me."


End file.
